Meet Alexis Tsipras, The Youthful Greek Leader Who Terrifies The European Financial Elite

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Alexis Tsipras has rarely been on good
terms with Greece's establishment.

During high school, he was a leader in a student protest against
education reform that shook the conservative government of the
early 1990s, appearing on television as a confident 16-year-old
spokesman for the movement.

Two decades later, he's rattling Europe and the world economy as
he campaigns to become Greece's next leader with a simple if
startling pledge: to tear up a multibillion-euro international
agreement that bailed out Greece as it hurtled toward bankruptcy.

The extreme left-wing Tsipras believes the budget-cutting imposed
on Greece, which is suffering through its fifth year of recession
and an unemployment rate nearly 22 percent, should be cancelled.
Global financial markets are on tenterhooks over a possible
victory by the tough-talking 37-year-old, who dresses casually
and has a portrait of the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara on
his office wall.

European financial leaders quickly put together a plan to rescue
Spain's banks over the weekend in part to try to limit financial
fallout from the Greek election.

Tsipras' radical agenda scares even many Europeans who have
railed against austerity. And if he's given the power to carry it
out, Greece may soon find itself kicked out of the euro common
currency.

Opinion polls now put his Tsipras' Syriza party, which long
struggled to win seats in Parliament, in a dead heat with the
once powerful center-right New Democracy. The election is June
17.

Greeks deserted mainstream parties in May 6 inconclusive
elections after the country sank into a government-debt crisis
that forced draconian spending cuts. Even low-income pensioners
and minimum wage-earners have been forced to make sacrifices.

"The rotten and reliant establishment is making its last stand.
Their dominance is ending after they looted the country and
saddled it with debt," Tsipras said at a recent campaign
appearance.

Friends describe him as down-to-earth and committed to change. He
is Greece's first major political leader to be born after the
fall of the country's 1967-74 military dictatorship, which ended
decades of political turmoil. He grew up in an era of
unprecedented political freedom in Greece, without having
experienced any of the harsh polarization between left and right
that marked the country since the mid-1930s.

"He has played a big role in the party's (success), mainly
because he's a politician who does not keep his distance from
people," ranking Syriza member Sofia Sakorafa told the AP.

Sakorafa, a longtime javelin world record holder before going
into politics, said she was impressed by Tsipras' ability reach
out to voters.

"He can talk to people, and he is genuine. He wins them over with
the truth as he believes it."

Rarely seen wearing a tie, Tsipras has broken the mold of the
Greek career politician. Unlike many of them, he isn't linked to
one of the country's powerful families, and during the crisis he
hasn't been seen as being out of touch.

He has been riding high on a wave of anti-austerity sentiment
that has swept the country as deep spending cuts have eaten into
health care, salaries and pensions, sent the unemployment rate
soaring and forced tens of thousands of businesses to shut down
since late 2009.

Despite two international rescue loan packages, Greece has been
unable to pull itself out of its debt crisis, leading the heads
of all the main political parties to argue for some form of
renegotiation to the terms. But it is Tsipras who has the most
radical approach, saying that simply extending loan repayment
times or slightly tweaking targets will not work. He wants the
terms cancelled.

But while the iPad-tapping, football-watching civil engineer has
youthful appeal, not everyone is buying it.

A growing number of political opponents have a different
description for him: an irresponsible populist, whose disregard
for basic monetary arithmetic could nudge the country into
financial oblivion.

"Syriza is selling the public a fairytale with populism and
propaganda of the worst kind ... pretending they can solve the
country's problems with a magic wand," Theodoros Pangalos, deputy
prime minister in the previous Socialist-led government, told
private Real FM radio.

Mainstream parties and market analysts insist Tsipras cannot
shred Greece's deal with 16 other eurozone countries and expect
to remain in the single currency for long.

"(His) views only have appeal because of the exceptionally
difficult circumstances this country and its people are in,"
Pangalos said.

Syriza came second to the conservatives in May 6 elections that
failed to produce a government, winning nearly 17 percent of the
vote and increasing its support four-fold.

Polls before a two-week pre-election ban projected Syriza's
support could have surged to as high as 30 percent, with the race
between Tsipras and the conservatives polarized by the crisis.
Most have him neck-and-neck with the conservative New Democracy
party.

Greece's €240 billion financial rescue from the EU and
International Monetary Fund came with harsh conditions that have
caused a dramatic drop in living standards as an average of 900
people have lost their job per day.

The country, Tsipras argues, is now trapped in a revolving door
of debt, with banks recovering their money from new state loans
from the EU, which steadily add a burden on ordinary Greeks,
depriving them of wealth and services.

"Bankruptcy is not when the bankers have no money ... Bankruptcy
is what we are living through today, it is the destruction of
pension funds, it is hospitals running out of money and medicine,
it is schools with no books and children who arrive hungry in the
morning," he told parliament in February, when lawmakers slashed
the minimum wage and other benefits to secure a second massive
rescue package.

Fully named the Coalition of the Radical Left, Syriza is an
amalgam of small and often fringe left-wing groups and has its
roots in the Euro-Communist movement of the late 1960s. It is led
by a party formed in 1991 that split from the hardline Greek
Communist Party, or KKE, following the collapse of the Soviet
Union.

As a teenager, Tsipras briefly joined the KKE youth.

Since the last major split in the Left two decades ago, Syriza
has been a magnet for left-wing intellectuals unable to stomach
the KKE's unconditional opposition to the European Union.
Politically, however, most have spent their careers in obscurity.

Until now. At a recent campaign event, camera crews from around
the world packed into an arts center where Tsipras spoke, as
supporters chanted "The hour of the left has arrived!"

Embassy representatives from Cuba, Venezuela and France were
present, as Syriza listed each of its campaign promises to loud
applause: Axed benefits will be restored, troops will come home
from Afghanistan and other overseas missions, police will be
banned from using tear gas at demonstrations.

If he wins on Sunday, Tsipras left little doubt over his
intentions.

"The first act of the new Left government, immediately after
parliament is formed, will be to cancel the bailout terms and the
laws passed to implement (austerity)," he said.

"People should remember that Greece is still a democracy: The
voters elect their representatives, and they exercise their
sovereign right to pass the laws of the land."